


Promising

by Spurlunk



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 07:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2100228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spurlunk/pseuds/Spurlunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few years later, Spike visits Dawn at college to see if they can rekindle their old frienship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promising

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to @vulcantastic for helping me with this!!

The skinny vampire in the black coat with his trademark platinum hair was lurking outside the Brooks College library at ten pm on a Tuesday night, a slowly growing pile of cigarette butts ground into the dirt at his feet. He peered into the large window, to the small wooden table where three young women were laughing and chatting over a pile of papers and textbooks. One of them had a laptop open.  She had long brown hair reaching halfway down her back, and she was sitting at an angle so that he could see her profile. She had grown, she was no longer a little girl. Now she was more of a young woman, and beautiful just like her sister. Spike had always had a soft spot for the Summers women.

It was late, and Spike watched Dawn say something to her friends, gather her things, and leave. She was going to walk back to her dorm alone? He thought he had taught her better than that. He put out his last cigarette and followed her, keeping his distance and lurking in the shadows. There were a few lamps lining the pathway from the library to the academic buildings, the dorms, and the cafeteria, but Dawn didn't stick to the path. She veered off to take a shortcut through a dark, woodsy patch. Spike cursed under his breath and she turned around. She squinted into the shadows but didn't see him and moved on. He trailed close behind.

The vampire attacked without warning. This was unusual, usually they tried to lure their prey to lonely places. Apparently that wasn't necessary when a girl was already walking alone in the dark. Dawn was spun around and pinned to a tree, struggling as the vampire held her down. Spike had no choice.

"Hey!" he yelled, trying to think of some kind of snappy one-liner and coming up totally blank. The vampire turned to see who had happened upon him, and Dawn pulled out a stake and stabbed him right in the heart. The vampire exploded into dust and Dawn put her stake back into her bag, frowning at Spike.

"I had everything under control," she said.

"Well excuse me, niblet," Spike said, offended.

"Don't call me that. Why are you even here?"

"I don't know, I uh...I didn't really...I wanted to..." Spike stammered, and he thought he saw the ghost of a smile on Dawn's face.

"I have a test in the morning, I need to go to sleep. Are you sticking around?" she asked.

"Yeah, probably. I mean, if I don't have anything better to do."

"Uh-huh. Well if you want to join, I'll probably go to the Starbucks across from the History building after my test, around eleven, for a coffee before I go to work. If you're still in the neighborhood." Dawn said. Spike had the distinct feeling she was mocking him.

"I might be."

"Okay," Dawn said, and turned away, walking the last few yards back to the lighted path. Spike made sure she was safely inside her building before he left.

~

Spike was sitting at one of the round tables, hunkering down with his coat collar popped up, sleeves yanked over his hands, and the rest of his exposed skin in the relative safety of the umbrella's shade. There were handfuls of students at the other tables, hanging out in front of the building that contained a Starbucks and a Chinese takeout place. Spike was pretty sure that he wasn't imagining the weird looks that they were directing his way but he was sitting there playing with sugar packets and aggressively ignoring the stares.

Dawn sat down across from him with a chocolate chip frappuchino, opening the top and licking some whipped cream off the plastic straw.

"Your test go alright?" Spike asked. Dawn shrugged.

"Yeah, I think I did okay."

"You look different." Spike said. Dawn self-consciously pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. She was wearing earrings, little red studs.

"You look the same," she replied, with a hint of a smile, the first he'd seen from her. The side of his mouth turned up a little and he leaned back but then remembered that he was barely covered by the shade of the umbrella, yelped as the sun began to burn the back of his neck, and leaned forward again.

" You look more like your sister now. You seem...confident. Happy."

"Buffy's better with the witty one-liners than I'll ever be. But thanks. Have you seen her?"

"Nah. I don't think she'd wanna see me. I know you and me, we didn't ... we didn't part on good terms, and I missed you coming round to my place and asking to hear all about the bad things I've done."

"I'm not a kid anymore. And you hurt Buffy." Dawn said. She chose the words carefully, and Spike couldn't hide a wince.

"I know you’ll never forgive me. Bloody well shouldn’t. Can’t exactly expect things to be the way they were before, but. Thought we could be friends."

"We can try." Dawn said, and Spike was pleased. He hadn't expected that. In fact, he hadn't known at all what to expect. It had been years, which for him might not mean that much but for Dawn meant the difference between a teenage girl and a young woman.

A young man with dark skin and clean-cut good looks walked over and sat down next to Dawn, putting an arm around her shoulder. There was a girl with him that Spike recognized as one of the friends she'd been studying with in the library last night, and she sat down at the other side of table, clearly keeping a distance from Spike. He knew he stood out.

"How'd the test go, Dawn?" the boy asked. She put her hand on his and smiled.

"I think it went alright, we'll see."

"Who's your friend?" the girl asked.

"This is Spike, he's one of my sister's old friends, he used to babysit me," Dawn said. Spike nodded at them. He couldn't shake their hands since stretching out his arm would risk exposing it to the bright sunlight.

"Nice to meet you Spike, I'm Ethan."

"I'm Britt."

"Uh... I gotta go," he said, standing up quickly.

"What?" Dawn said.

"I'll see you around," he said, and yanked his coat up over his head, making a run for the building. Dawn's friends watched him go.

"He's a little ... weird."

"He's allergic to the sun."

"Is that even a thing?"

"Totally."

~

Dawn worked three days a week at the campus library, and that's where she was when it happened. She had just clocked in and grabbed a trolley of books to reshelf, and was heading into the elevator to go to the fourth floor when someone ran in before the door closed. She recognized the boy with glasses and a scruffy half-grown beard as Ethan's roommate and smiled.

"Hey James, what's up?" she said as she pushed the button.

"Late for class," he said with a sheepish smile and she saw that he was a little out of breath. Dawn shook her head at him, smiling. The elevator suddenly jerked as something shook the entire building. The lights flickered and Dawn grabbed onto the railing on the back wall. The elevator came to a stop in between the third and fourth floors, but when James hit the button the doors opened.

"What was that?" Dawn asked.

"An earthquake maybe?" he said.

"Here? We don't get earthquakes."

"Let's get out of here, come on, I'll help you up." James said. The elevator had stopped in such a way that the fourth floor was about at the level of Dawn's face.

"It's okay, I got this," Dawn said, dumping the books of the metal trolley and pushing it over to the wall. James held it still for her as she climbed up and hoisted herself out of the elevator. He followed after her, but Dawn hadn't gotten up and she made him stay low to the ground as well.

"Ssh!" she hissed, and pointed. There were half a dozen figures walking through the stacks in front of them, hoping and praying that they wouldn't turn around. She guessed from their outdated clothing that they were vampires, but she was proven right when one of them turned around and spotted them. The trademark lumpy forehead was out and the fangs were bared.

"What the  - "

"Shh!" Dawn said, and scrambled to her feet, dragging James up with her and heading for the stacks, running as fast as she could. She ran in a zigzag, circuitous rouet, shoving chairs over and knocking books off their shelves to make it harder for the vampires pursuing them. James broke free and ran ahead of her - she lost him for a minute, but when she emerged from the shelves she saw him holding open the door to the stairs. As soon as she got in, he slammed the door behind her and braced his whole body against it. With one punch a vampire knocked a hole in the wood - Dawn was already one flight of stairs down.

"James! Come on, you can't hold them!" she yelled, and she heard a commotion and feared the worst, but then James was next to her, taking the stairs two, three, four at a time, until he slammed right into someone and they all toppled to the ground, a pile of humans and vampires, momentarily confused.

"Spike! Thank god," Dawn said, when she saw who James had run into.

"I was just coming to say goodbye - "

"Spike shut up! We have a problem here, if you hadn't noticed - " Dawn said.

"They blew up the lobby, they - "

"Spike!"

The vampires were beginning to gather their bearings, and two of them were on James but Dawn couldn't get to him because there were two more on Spike and then three on her, and she was barely holding her own - Dawn wasn't a Slayer, and she didn't have as much as a pencil on her, but then Spike tossed her a piece of wood that she was pretty sure used to belong to a chair and she staked a vampire, turning him to dust. Spike had already taken care of three more, and Dawn was trying to get to James, but she couldn't - then the last vampire turned to ash and Dawn leaned back against the stair railing, breathing hard. James struggled to his feet, clutching his arm to his chest.

"You okay?" she asked.

"I think my arm's broken," he said.

"Go down the stairs, all the way. There's a back entrance out the basement."

"What about you?" he asked.

"Don't worry about me. Go!" she said, and James obeyed, heading down the stairs as fast as he could go.

Spike picked up the pieces of chair he'd used as stakes and handed one to Dawn, taking the other two for himself.

"This kind of thing ever happen at Brooks College?" he asked as they headed up the stairs to the lobby.

"Nope, this is a first."

"They might have followed me here from LA."

"Great. What are we gonna do about it?" Dawn asked.

"Kick their ass, of course. You don't think the Slayer's sister and the only vampire with a soul who isn't a ninny can take care of this? Come on, have some faith."

"Yeah, okay, weirdo," Dawn said, smiling despite everything. They burst into the lobby only to see the place was in ruins. The whole front of the building had been blown away, and vampires preyed on the injured and dead lying in the front area.

"There's so many," she whispered, since none of them had noticed them yet. She looked around and saw a handful of kids hiding out under the computer desks, trying to make themselves silent and invisible.

"You got a plan?" Spike asked.

"Yeah. You go first. I'll be there in a second," she said, and Spike grinned. Yelling like a maniac, he threw himself at the vampires, attacking them before they knew what hit them. The element of surprise would only work for so long, though.

"They're vampires, so a wooden stake through the heart will kill them. Pencils, chair legs, whatever you've got, come on."

Nobody moved.

"Do you wanna die? COME ON!" she yelled. About half of them obeyed, and she didn't have time to look back and see if they were following her as she launched herself into the fray.

~

Spike had slipped away as soon as the tide of the fighting had turned, and Dawn stayed in the library long after the last vampire was dusted. She helped comfort the wounded and thanked those who had fought alongside her and stayed to talk to the police and let the paramedics patch up the cuts and bruises she'd suffered. Ethan came to the library as soon as he heard what had happened from James, who'd gone straight to their dorm room once he had escaped, and it felt really nice to lean into Ethan's embrace. He didn't know about her past, and the official story was that the attack on the library had been something about gang violence, and all the perpetrators had fled.

Any student who gave a different story was thought to be suffering from trauma and shock, and once the first few were taken to the hospital for observation, the rest got the hint. Ethan insisted on walking Dawn back to her dorm, and he wouldn't leave until she finally just told him she was tired and needed to rest. She took a much needed shower and changed out of her dusty jeans, lying down on her bed only to yelp in shock when she saw a face at her window. She pulled it open and there was Spike, standing outside her window in the dark moonlight.

"Hey, I just wanted to make sure you were okay," he said.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just tired. You?"

Spike shrugged.

"It was nice fighting with you tonight. Kind of like old times." Dawn said.

"You've gotten better since then, you held your own," he said.

"I've trained a lot. Are you sticking around?" she asked. Spike fidgeted a little, picking at the chipped black nail polish on his fingers.

"Dunno. I might. You'll be around, though, right?"

"For the next two years at least." Dawn said, hiding a smile.

"Good. I'll see ya, then." Spike said, and wandered off into the shadows. Dawn left her window open as she lay back down. The breeze ruffled her hair and felt cool and promising on her skin.

 


End file.
